a colaboradora · instance, we kept the public call, the free participation, the offering of a...
TRANSCRIPT
1
arts
communities
A Colaboradoramemory of an open process
Foreword
Editorial_The value of collaboration networks
Introduction_Document to inspire
01. The beginning/ Preliminary planning
/ Open call
02. Acquaintance/ Territory
/ Collaborative methodologies to strengthen the commons: coexistence, self-management and collective intelligence
/ People and projects/ Aline Benedito (FIXXA)/ Bruno Malagrino/ Cássia Sabino/ Ewald Cordeiro/ Juliana do Espirito Santo/ Marilda Carvalho/ Marina Guzzo/ Marina Paes/ MID/ Michael Xavier (MK)/ Ornella Rodrigues/ Révi
03. Agreements/ Time banking:
money can’t buy me love
/ Self-management: are we together in this
/ Care work: who cleans your living room? Your kitchen? Your toilet?
04. Studio
05. Conclusion/ Festival_Meeting cultures
and communities
/ Lessons_“The art of living, which blossoms still”
Contents6
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12
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22 24
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30
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47
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58 60
64
Marilda Carvalho preparing for the Cabaret.
6 7
ABOUT THIS PUBLICATION_This is a publication about the Colaboradora
- Arts and Communities (originally Colaboradora - Artes e Comunidades). The project,
developed by Instituto Procomum in 2018, gathers a collaborative network of artists in
a collective work space (LAB Procomum) and sets them off in an educational process
geared towards cultural production and community action to defend the commons.
Throughout one year we promoted the exchange of knowledge and cultural, aesthet-
ic production, always connected to the idea of community and territory, specifically in
the neighborhoods comprising the Market Wharf, in the city of Santos, in the coastline
of São Paulo, Brazil. Based on testimonials and reflections from the participants (both
artists and audience) and along with the project managers, we produced this docu-
ment with the goal of inspiring similar initiatives.
READERS_The publication is aimed towards civil society organizations, public
entities, private companies, donors, social agents, community leaders, and citizen
labs that wish to create, enhance and/or activate a network of artistic and community
collaboration.
THE COLABORADORA - ARTS AND COMMUNITIES, BY IN-STITUTO PROCOMUM_ The Colaboradora - Arts and Communities is a
collaborative art school focused on the development of cultural projects with a
community dimension. Its format is in itself an innovative solution for political-cultural
mediation, as it is a cooperation scheme based on the active listening of territories,
the use of a time-based social currency, and care practices.
In its first year, the project forged bonds with the community and established a net-
work of socially engaged artists whose work seeks the objective and subjective
transformation of life. By producing a continuous flow of relationships between the
different communities, the Colaboradora became an experimental environment for
practicing the commons. The project was inspired by La Colaboradora, a program by
social innovation ecosystem Zaragoza Activa, from Spain, which is a Citizen Innovation
Lab and a partner of Instituto Procomum.
THE COMMUNITY_ In this project, the connection between different com-
munity dimensions happened through art and culture, with different layers of action:
incubated projects, residencies, mappings, continuing education, and cultural circuits.
Culture is therefore the rhizome connecting active and creative citizenship. Under
this perspective, citizens are not treated solely as the beneficiaries of social and hu-
man rights, but as co-creators of possible worlds. Our main raw material, in this sense,
is the unique experience of each person.
Foreword
Read more content about
The Colaboradora:
labsantista.procomum.
org/a-colaboradora-2018/
To know more about
La Colaboradora, visit:
zaragoza.es/ciudad/sectores/
activa/lacolaboradora/
• a physical, collective space of work and creation;
• a platform for artistic expression that changes lives;
• an ethical, aesthetic experiment of an art of the commons;
• a collaborative arts and entrepreneurship school;
• an experiment and systematization of a time-based social currency
through the exchange of hours;
• a cultural and educational action in the Market Wharf, in Santos.
The Colaboradora is:
8 9
The Colaboradora project, whose documentation is the subject of this publication,
was born as La Colaboradora in Zaragoza, capital of the province of Aragon, in Spain.
Its mission was to challenge a chronic issue in today’s world: the lack of jobs and in-
come that blights the young population. Around 2013, its founders wanted to create a
solidarity network of creative entrepreneurs and/or freelancers, offering them a col-
lective work space as well as open, free education.
The selection of the collaborators was done through an open call and the spots
were offered at no cost. In exchange, the selected professionals should donate hours
to each other, creating a time bank and a social currency between peers. The process,
innovative from the start, was a huge success and benefited over 300 people in the
five first years. It ended up being acknowledged by the 2016 EuroCities Award.
I met La Colaboradora in 2015 and fell in love with it. It was during an citizen inno-
vation exchange program promoted by the Ibero-american General Secretariat, which
allowed me to take a one-month residency in Spain. At the time, neither Instituto Pro-
comum (IP) nor our citizen lab existed: they were in gestation. The exchanges that took
place during that trip were doubtlessly essential to what we would become.
Out of everything I witnessed in those days – and I witnessed many amazing things
– nothing struck me as much as Zaragoza’s creative economy project: Zaragoza Ac-
tiva. Headquartered inside the Azucarera building, an old beet sugar factory remod-
eled to house a 75,000-square foot cultural venue, it had countless action categories.
Among them was La Colaboradora, whose space felt like a dream with its brick walls,
high-end design furniture, well-established cooperation methodologies, and network
of interested and interesting people who seemed very happy to be there.
The value of collaboration networksby Rodrigo Savazoni, director of Instituto Procomum
Ornella Rodrigues and Juliana do Espirito Santo during the Aporto / Tsunami performance.
editorial
10 11
I returned to Brazil extremely inspired, knowing that one day we would experiment
in the Santos Basin a tropical version of that Spanish methodology. And here we are,
telling you what we learned from our Colaboradora - Arts and Communities, which
was developed in 2018 and gathered 12 artists using different artistic mediums in a
collective process that was extremely transformative for each one of us.
I must confess beforehand that we actually imitated certain things, because what
is good deserves to be copied (and this is only possible when the projects are open
source). Many other things, however, we sought to do differently, incorporating from
the beginning the references and perspectives of our team at Instituto Procomum. For
instance, we kept the public call, the free participation, the offering of a collective work
space, the use of a time-based social currency and the fostering of self-education.
Other than that, there were many adaptations.
Over there, La Colaboradora is a public initiative, maintained by the administration
of one of the biggest cities in Spain. Here, the Colaboradora is an initiative by a civil
society organization focused on inventing and practicing the commons, funded by
international resources. Over there, the scope is entrepreneurship and the transfor-
mations in 21st-Century labor. Here, we gathered artists and creators seeking social
transformation in territories that were abandoned by the State, particularly the neigh-
borhoods surrounding our headquarters known as the Market Wharf, in Santos.
Over there, although the network enjoys a lot of autonomy from the city adminis-
tration, it gets basic services such as cleaning, power, water and other basic necessi-
ties. Here, reproductive labor and care among people and towards the space were at
the core and were even part of the requirements listed in the open call.
Here, we also greatly emphasized race and gender issues and offered the select-
ed artists a small scholarship. Initially this was not planned, but it turned out to be
necessary given that social exclusion in the Global South is incomparably more harsh.
In hacker culture, which open-source software teaches us, there is a saying that
goes like this: “publish soon, publish forever.” After all, why keep information when you
can share it with more people? That’s what we believe in: together, through horizontal
exchange, we can improve our lives. And, in this melting pot of good ideas, there is
room for a lot of seasoning – including ours, picked in our gardens and caiçara1 woods.
Finally, it is worth saying that we are part of a group of similar experiences taking
place in other cities in Spain, in Argentina’s Santa Fé and Rosario, and in Pasto, located
in Colombia’s Nariño province. If this publication gets our readers excited about build-
ing their own Colaboradora, here’s an invitation to join our network.
1 Caiçara refers to the traditional communities and culture of the coastal regions of Southeas-tern and Southern Brazil.
Colaboradores, Etinerances Collective and the Team Procomum in their first immersion.
12 13
The projects we carry out at Instituto Procomum are characterized by
complexity. We are routinely faced with questions about the meaning of
the commons, about our fields of work (after all, what is the focus of what
you do?), and about the impact generated by our achievements. These
questions haunt us and we have been preparing ourselves to get better at
answering them. With the Colaboradora - Arts and Communities it was no
different. The project, although inspired by a European experience, took
new form here, mixing art and social work, culture and collaborative econ-
omy, care and territorial wanderings, all mediated by the special attention
given to each person in our net of collaboration.
How, then, can we draw something tangible from this maze?
Since the beginning of our work, we have betted on the production
of publications that document the knowledge we generate throughout
our processes. This material is an attempt at a systematization with the
goal to make known what we have done and also inspire partners in the
invention of a common world.
It is not a closed methodology, a step-by-step or how-to guide. What
we produced was the documentation of an open process, which is still un-
derway (so far we only experienced the first year of this journey). Recently,
under the influence of partner organizations such as CASCO - working for
the commons, from the Netherlands, we started reflecting a lot on pro-
cesses of learning and unlearning – what we incorporate to our hard drive
and also what we need to get rid of to reach genuinely transformative
results. Therefore, based on the testimonials and reflections of the artists
and audience that were part of the project, as well as our partners and
work team, we gathered the elements that made us learn and unlearn
throughout the project.
Document to inspire
The commons are optics to see reality differently. These six points address the additional aspects of how our organization understands this concept.
The commons comprise common goods themselves (the planet, socio-environmental heritage, the body, the urban, and the digital) plus the management of these goods by self-governing communities through rules and procedures that guarantee their enjoyment by everyone – and that prevent them from being taken by one or some in the so-called enclosure. In the concise formula proposed by David Bollier, the commons = resource + community + protocols.
They are a governance model operated by a network of commoners, their communities, and the planet.
They are a political process that calls us to act beyond the stratified forms of the market and the modern State.
They are also an economic alternative that produces relations of reciprocity (gift), generosity and solidarity in communities (either local or global), favoring use-value over exchange-value.
They are collective life – this collective being formed by humans, their creations (nonhumans) and the other living beings that cohabitate Earth (a living being itself). Therefore, a socio-ecological system.
They are a cultural transformation of huge proportions, resulting from a process based on affection, senses and spirituality. A practical tutorial for a life of joy and imagination.
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The meaning of the commons
To know more
about Casco visit:
http://casco.art/
by Marília Guarita, coordinator of Colaboradora
e Rodrigo Savazoni, director of Instituto Procomum
introduCtion
14 15
In its first year, the Colaboradora - Arts and Communities generated
concrete results. It educated twelve artists (out of thirteen initially select-
ed), part of whose voices and images are featured in this edition; it promot-
ed 150 cultural activities, reaching nearly 1,800 people in the Market Wharf
area; it mobilized social currency transactions that, if converted to the
prevailing currency, would correspond to BRL 48,000.00 (or € 12,841.11),
considering the hourly rate of cultural professionals in this region; it en-
abled first-time exhibitions, debut books, circus shows, and various perfor-
mances, in addition to opening a channel for the subjective understand-
ing of the world – something that is nearly impossible to measure, unless
through eye-to-eye dialogue with those who participated in the project. In
this sense, seeking to carry emotional reverberations into these pages, we
wrap up this introduction with Luana’s words.
A resident of Vila Matias, she got in touch with the Colaboradora at
the city’s Psychosocial Support Center (CAPS). She heard there would be
a dance workshop promoted by the Colaboradora’s artists, in close con-
nection with resident Nemécio Berrio Guerrero (whose visit was also part
of the project). Let’s hear what she has to say.
“I imagined another kind of dance, such as a routine that we should
follow… But they proposed that we created our own dance, that we let out
what was inside us. That’s when I discovered a ballerina in me, who I didn’t
know existed, and who I let out. From then on, I’ve been doing ballet and
this is how I feel good.
This project was wonderful because it opened doors to so many activ-
ities… For people to see that there is a culture, a different reality out there
beyond the one we experience here in the neighborhood.”
We hope this is a pleasant read. We’ll be happy to tell you more about
the project in person. Come and meet us in Santos.
10months
in the territory: performances, interventions, workshops, wanderings
150actions
Nearly
1800participants
Conrado Federici and invited during the presentation of the Cabaret.
16
Study the details of the Spanish project developed in Zaragoza; define project management team; map artists and network with them; study the Mar-ket Wharf territory; select participating artists;
The beginning
01
01
18 19
SETTINg UP THE TEAM_The Executive Board of Instituto Procomum han-
dled the executive management of the project, especially strategic decisions, part-
nerships, institutional representation, and accounting. For daily management there
was a general coordinator responsible for overseeing operations.
Inspired by the La Colaboradora model, we also selected a local mediator, who
handled the relationship between the participants and the team of Instituto Proco-
mum, and a local organizer, responsible for the participants’ connection with the local
territory and community. Both were selected out of the group of artists participating
in the project.
TARgET AUDIENCE?_Because the project comprised the development of
artistic and cultural projects with a community dimension, we prioritized artists whose
life had been associated to community contexts, especially peripheral ones, and
who knew how to engage with popular territories.
Another parameter was mixing different mediums and languages with the inten-
tion of fostering exchanges between different aesthetic realms.
In addition, we sought to work with artists in different states of maturity: some
already working professionally, with experience developing cultural projects, and
having a more defined work identity; others still in development, only beginning to
recognize themselves as artists, learning to produce their own work and in search of
an artistic journey.
IDENTIFYINg THE PARTICIPANTS_We decided that the
selection of the participants would be mixed: most of it would happen
through the open call, while some of it would happen through a cura-
torial process done by the production team. To personally select some
of the artists was our way to do active listening, aiming to become more
precise in the selection of local artists and anticipation of future demands.
WHAT WE OFFERED_We invested in a space that was capa-
ble of absorbing the needs of the artists: a work room in which furniture
could be easily moved around for body and music related performances;
a table with the correct height and structure for painting; and proper light
and ventilation.
As soon as the project began, each participant received the keys to
the Procomum Lab and the Colaboradora work room. This allowed them
to have free access to the space at any time of the day, as long as the
pre-established agreements were followed.
COLLECTIvE RESOURCE MANAgEMENT_We offered
two funds to be collectively managed by the artists:
_ Continuing Education Fund: for courses, the topics and teachers
of which would be defined by the beneficiaries themselves;
_ Material Fund: the projects were entitled to funds for the mate-
rials needed in their production.
The idea behind this was that collective decisions would be the most
effective and efficient way to use these funds, optimizing the resources
and allowing collective planning.
LISTENINg TO THE TERRITORY_To better understand the
local territory and community, we decided that we would gradually map
key people and places that could feed into the project with their sto-
ries and experiences. The mapping and the format of these gatherings
would both be developed by the participants.
Preliminary planning
Once the initial plan was established and the resources for the project were guaran-
teed, the following steps involved some fine tuning:
It is worth saying that, in
this matter, the results were
not so positive – especially
in terms of autonomy for
resource management.
It would be premature to
state whether this would
have occured in any group
or if it was specific to the
group participating in the
first year of the project.
But we learned that, par-
ticularly in the educational
opportunities, we will need
to develop a curriculum
and determine what skills
we wish to enhance during
the educational cycle.
Learning how to manage
monetary and non-mon-
etary resources is a major
challenge for people in the
creative sector, especially
artists. And this must be
addressed.
20 21
On March 2018, the Colaboradora launched an open call to select its participants and
detail how the project would work. It was widely disseminated across the Santos Ba-
sin, the area on which it focused. This was the first public step taken by the Colab-
oradora - Arts and Communities, as a result of the meetings and debates carried out
among the organizing team. the content of the Open Call was precise, direct and
easy to understand, allowing it to circulate through the most varied spaces and
reach different audiences; it also served as the primary reference on the project.
The main topics addressed by the Open Call were the following:
What will the Colaboradora offer to selected apllicants?_ Connection with an international, national and local network of people and
initiatives working with citizen innovation, free culture, community develop-
ment, arts, and creativity, aiming at strengthening and preserving the com-
mon goods;
_ Mentoring by the team of Instituto Procomum, which comprises professio-
nals of different fields of knowledge as well as guests (some of whom will
develop residencies at our lab);
_ An exclusive work and creation space, equipped with power, internet con-
nection, tables and chairs;
_ Access to Laboratório Procomum’s entire infrastructure: locker rooms, ur-
ban permaculture lab, kitchen, multipurpose room, classroom, dorm rooms
for housing, storage space, library, recreational area, and everything else still
to be invented;
_ Access to a self-education fund to be collectively managed by the artists
and producers selected by the Colaboradora;
_ Support for project creation and development of sustainability plan;
_ Opportunity to develop a social-artistic work in the Market Wharf.
What should selected applicants offer in return? _ Participate in the Colaboradora’s community, its meetings and gatherin-
gs, which also entails being open to exchanging with the residents of the
Market Wharf area;
_ Develop an artistic project in the area surrounding Laboratório Procomum;
_ Create an cultural-artistic intervention at the closing festival, to be held in
the Market Wharf area;
_ Develop a dynamic of shared care across the entire Colaboradora, ensuring
that the upkeep of the space is everyone’s responsibility;
_ Exchange services with other participants through a time-based social
currency.
Selection criteria_ Aesthetic relevance and creative capacity;
_ Networking and collaboration capacity;
_ Thematic diversity (seeking different mediums and formats);
_ Valuing popular culture, traditional knowledge and marginal pathways of
creation;
_ Ability to share knowledge and educational experience.
PremisesEach of Instituto Procomum’s projects are founded on the premise of stren-
gthening the actions and creations of women (plural form), people of African
descent and other people belonging to what are conventionally referred to
as underrepresented groups.
Open call
Full text available for download at:
labsantista.procomum.org/edital-2018-a-colaboradora/
22
Getting to know the territory and the people who will intervene in it are prerequisites to any pro-ject related to arts and communities. Therefore, the second stage of the Colaboradora prioriti-zed the interaction between the selected artists and the Market Wharf area, in Santos, through an immersive process focused on care and com-mon good guided by the Etinerâncias (Wande-rings) collective. The collective employs various methodologies gathered throughout their expe-rience with traditional communities and com-plex urban processes such as occupations. We also detail here the 13 selected applicants and the projects they developed during the first edi-tion of the Colaboradora - Arts and Communities.
Acquaintance
02
02
24 25
TerritoryThe first edition of the Colaboradora - Arts and Communities was held in the territory
where Laboratório Procomum works, in Santos: the Market Wharf, an area surround-
ing the city’s Municipal Market, inaugurated in 1902 (but rebuilt to its current style in
1947) following the merger of two other markets that operated in the city back then.
Nowadays, the market has 54 stands with poultry, fruits and vegetables, dairy, fish
and seafood, arts and crafts, antiques, and flowers – many of which, however, are
currently empty.
In front of the Municipal Market, small boats called catraias arrive and depart. Sim-
ilar to canoes, but bigger and motorized, these boat carry up to 20 seated people and
are used for commuting between Santos and Vicente de Carvalho (a 130,000-people
district of Guarujá) all day long, including at night. The straight-line, 245-foot journey is
done by boatmen who dock in front of the Market; it costs BRL 1.50 (€ 0.40) and takes
10 minutes as it crosses the Santos estuary and its enormous boats headed towards
the Port. To take the estuary, the catraias go through a small canal beneath the ave-
nues and the huge warehouses at the Santos Port Docks, the biggest in Latin America.
The catraia is the quickest way along this route.
The region surrounding the Market, also known as Vila Nova, is 20 minutes away
on foot from the downtown area of Santos, where the city began, and another 30 min-
utes from the beaches at the neighborhoods of Boqueirão, Gonzaga, and Ponta da
Praia – where the local middle and high classes are.
The Market Wharf has narrow streets, various businesses and tenements –
cramped-up accommodations, normally located in old, deteriorated buildings, and
inhabited mostly by large, poor families. It is an area with high rates of crime, drug
trafficking, sexual exploitation of children, and militias. However, it is also very lively:
a variety of products from different places – especially the Brazilian Northeast; spon-
taneous gatherings in bars, in front of the Market and the Catraia station; and street
market known as Feira do Rolo, a large exhibit of diverse products and knickknacks
that happens every Sunday morning.
26 27
“How will we place ourselves in this territory? We have to realize that the exchange might also happen less than pleasantly. We have responsibilities towards this place: we don’t want to be colonizers, to bring the truth, the one and only truth. How can art and aesthetics contribute in this aspect? How do we take what we know and put it towards building the commons here?”
georgia Haddad Nicolau, director of Instituto Procomum
“This territory is very particular to Santos, timeless and old. The streets and houses take us back to another time, but the people’s lives are very current.”
Cássia Sabino, participant in the Colaboradora
“It’s a very hardened, hurt and wounded area.”
Marina Paes, participant in the Colaboradora
“This region has been forgotten by the State and by the society of the Santos Basin, who doesn’t want to inhabit it. This also creates a void that escapes control: when you walk through the surroundings of the municipal Market, you see people making fires on the street.” Rodrigo Savazoni, director of Instituto Procomum
Fixxxa and a girl looking at the moon on the deserted street next to the Market Basin.
Samara Faustino, president of the slums association and responsible for the community bakery of the Market Basin.
28 29
Collaborative methodologies to strengthen the commons: coexistence, self-management and collective intelligence By the Etinerâncias collective
a group of artists that has just emerged. Together, for the first time.
How can we qualify this meeting between us? How can we get rid of all the dust
that taints our relationships with the monochromatic logic of competition, the traces
of colonization and the crisis of loneliness?
We live in times that demand creativity. To collaborate is to remember, a verb that
has been kept alive since ancient times, keeping life livable in our homes and our
neighbor’s, avoiding the systematic logic of scarcity. How, then, can we access and
bring into the center of the debate our baggage of practices and memories about col-
lectivity and collaboration? How can we practice cooperation for the continuation of
livable life in art? How can we build a space that stems from experiments on collabo-
ration in order to create other methodologies of work, coexistence, and management
of the tasks related to the production and reproduction of life? The principles of our
method are listening, connection and coexistence. We intend to stimulate collective
intelligence to address the challenge of helping the Colaboradora – a proposal as
daring as it is current – stand on its own feet.
And so, we invite you to experience the potential bonds; to co-create an environ-
ment in which affection can blossom; to strengthen and remember the culture of col-
laboration as a daily, ancestral strategy that makes life possible; to allow the crossing
of different journeys; to envision networks; to experience the territory through different
feelings; to live the challenge of collective management of common issues; to interpret
the power and limitations of the group; and to draw cartographies to keep memory alive.
We set off in a catraia* with 12 artists, the very special team of Instituto Procomum,
the three facilitators of the Etinerâncias collective, a memory guardian, and a boat-
man towards the high sea. We are crossing the continent towards the other side, un-
known to some, at times enjoying it, at times hit by a storm, sometimes serenading the
fish, sometimes laying down on the ground to avoid the obstacles. Getting to know
ourselves and the territories across the sea. So tiny and invisible next to the huge oil
tankers, but still rowing. This is how this very ocean surrounding the Market Wharf
receives everything that is born, grows and blossoms from this collective experience.
For us, it was a huge pleasure to welcome, witness, and listen to each artist and the
team of Instituto Procomum throughout these 10 months. Let us embrace now, after
this experience, the memory of a perseverance that leaves no one behind.
The Etinerâncias collective is formed by Raissa Capasso, Débora Del Guerra,
and Gabriel Kieling.
*a simple commuting boat that connects the Market Wharf to the district of Vicente de Carvalho
Collaborating requires meeting one another. To meet is an art. It requires a breadth
that intersects space-time and meaning.
For this reason, the Colaboradora was launched with a group immersion. Exper-
imenting oceans and rivers of collaborative, decolonial Latin American methodolo-
gies, through which our bodies, our memories, and our territories navigate, facilitated
by the Etinerâncias collective. Our first challenge is to immerse ourselves. To dive in,
to enter, to deepen ourselves in the power of an experience inspired by collaboration.
To become seed and forest at the same time, as is life. To be what we might become.
To raise a core, filled with meaning – our first possibility of confluence. Then, to dance
and maybe get to dancing with one another. To awaken the collective intelligence of
To establish a journey of dialogue between the community, the aspirations of each artist, and collective interests, an important step in the preparation of the Colaboradora was the Immersion process. Three meetings were held, the first one to recognize each person and the territory; the second one to reflect on each collaborator’s life plan and establish a medium and long-term strate-gy while placing art at the core; and, finally, the third meeting sought to adjust the projects that would be developed in the Market Wharf area, as well as es-tablish the activities for the closing circuit. The Etinerâncias collective offers more details of how an immersion works.
30 31
People and ProjectsParticipating artists in the first edition of
the Colaboradora - Arts and Communities and their projects:
32 33
Aline Benedito (FIXXA)A pioneer in female graffiti in the city of Santos, art
educator and cultural producer, Fixxa has been de-
veloping artistic interventions for 12 years with the
goal of highlighting public spaces that were previ-
ously unnoticed by people. For her mural painting,
she received an award in the 2014 Urban Downhill
contest (Santos City Administration) and participat-
ed in an exchange program with the Tolosa Festival
(Spain). Her inspiration is mainly the Santos basin,
but also the capital and interior of the states of São
Paulo and Pernambuco. Her stickers and banners
now give color to Argentina, Japan, and Europe. As
an art educator, she gives playful workshops on ur-
ban art for children and adults.
PROJECT_“Living Atelier” was an artistic pro-
cess conducted alongside homeless people, ca-
traia boatmen, and women from the Downtown
Tenements Association, the latter who are very
active in the Market Wharf area. It produced wood
engravings, photos and poems based on the in-
teractions between the artist and the participants.
She intends to make a book about her experience
called “Similar Meanings” (“Sentido Semelhante”)
and offer it as a gift to the participants, neighbor-
hood associations, and schools. During the months
of the Colaboradora, the artist also painted several
murals and graffitis in the Market Wharf as a way to
get closer to the territory and the people living in it.
Bruno MalagrinoBorn in São Paulo, in the neighborhood
of Cambuci, one of the birthplaces of
the region’s street art, Bruno holds a
Bachelor’s Degree in Graphic Arts and
Social Communications. He works as
a freelancer for various projects relat-
ed to illustration, product design, and
brand design. In the last 10 years, he
has developed his work as a graphic
artist in murals, graffiti, and other me-
diums, working with dream-like char-
acters and symbols.
PROJECT_Bruno began his jour-
ney in the Colaboradora with a project
related to the sea, a strong element in
caiçara culture and a “point of depar-
ture and arrival” for his research. How-
ever, during the process, he shifted the
core idea towards a visual reflection
about getting physically lost. Stem-
ming from the reality he found while
wandering through the territory and
talking to local residents, he produced
graffitis, murals, and an exhibition en-
titled “Missteps” (“Desencontros”) which
gathered drawings, paintings, and
poetry. Similarly to Fixxa, he used the
neighborhood walls as a canvas for
some of his creative processes during
his experience at the Colaboradora.
34 35
Cássia SabinoBorn in Santos, Cássia Sabino is known
as “Afreekassia”, a DJ, MC, and produc-
er. She is a member of the DJ collective
Alce Negro and explores the sound of
“Punanny Sound System”, gathering
the sounds of the “rude, sensitive inti-
macy of black women”. Cássia is also
the creator and coordinator of Portal
Umoja, a collective that seeks to unite
and represent black women through
collective art production. At 21 years
old, she was the youngest participant
in the Colaboradora and, during the
first edition of the project, was com-
pleting her Bachelor’s studies in Public
Relations at Unisantos.
PROJECT_Punanny Sound Sys-
tem is a platform for art, DJing, poetry
slams, live editorial shoots, live paint-
ing, and dance workshops. It gathers
elements of material, visual, sound,
and sensory nature to celebrate the
aesthetic, sound, sexuality, and iden-
tity of black women of the diaspora.
Cássia carried out several Punnany
Sound System interventions during the
months of the Colaboradora, as well as
one edition with DJing, poetry, graffiti,
and dancing in December 2018.
Ewald CordeiroEwald Cordeiro is a 30-year old Mathematics and
Physics teacher and owner of an information tech-
nology consultancy company. In 2009 he began his
research on magic, focusing on bewitching those
who watch his tricks. Since then, he has been cre-
ating and participating in multidisciplinary works in-
cluding magic, juggling, performing arts, and music.
He performs in spaces and projects connected to
circus and theater groups, often as his magician al-
ter ego, Mister Duds. He is also a member of TraMar
Coletivo, which researches integrated language
and interventions.
PROJECT_The “(Un)Common Cabaret” (“Cabaré
(in)comum”) is a circus variety show that happened in
different places across the Market Wharf during the
months of the Colaboradora. The shows captivated
the audience through magic, juggling, acrobatics,
clowns, and other interventions. It also served as a
space for artists (some of which participated in the
Colaboradora) to test their numbers and interact with
other guest artists and the community.
36 37
An actress, performer and clown, with a Bachelor’s
Degree in Performing Arts from UEL (Londrina State
University). In 2012, she founded the Vozavós The-
ater Company and, since then has been develop-
ing practices and research connected to memory.
She is a member of the performance collective “The
Amazing Performing Rotten Oranges” and of the
Stupid Theater Company (Estúpida Cia de Teatro),
both in the city of Londrina. She participates in the
Black Scene Theater Group (Grupo de Teatro Cena
Preta), PRAIAÇAS, the female clown movement
of the Santos Basin, and Coletivo Lua, a group of
women who research the connections between the
body, movement, and space.
PROJECT_Juliana carried out a sensitive listen-
ing process through daily experiences in the Market
Wharf. Through this listening process, the actress
developed “Docked” (“Aporto”), an installation based
on the meetings between the sea and the catraie-
iros – the boats that connect Vicente de Carvalho (a
city district of Guarujá) and Santos through the Port
canal. Juliana also co-created and performed “Tsu-
nami” with Ornella Rodrigues.
Marilda CarvalhoBorn in São Paulo, Marilda has degrees
in Theater Direction, Theater Pedagogy,
and Community Theater. She founded
and participated in several artistic col-
lectives such as Viajou sem Passaporte,
Oficina UsynaUzona, Théâtre Aye-Aye,
and Ollin Théâtre. She worked as a the-
ater teacher in public schools in São
Paulo and taught classes at universities
(UDESC, UNESP, UFT-TO). She creat-
ed and produced the LusArts festival
in Montreal. As a playwright and the-
ater director. she created several plays,
among which is “My color is green my
heart is yellow” (“Minha cor é verde meu
coração é amarelo”).
PROJECT_“Stories of people and
plants” was a listening process, cap-
turing stories of the Vila Nova neigh-
borhood residents through exchanges:
Marilda offered sunflower seedlings,
sowed and grown throughout months
at the headquarters of Instituto Proco-
mum, in exchange for people’s stories.
At the end of the 10-month process, in
December 2018, the artist developed
and presented several installations
representing the narratives that she
collected. Because most of the stories
belonged to long time residents of the
neighborhood, the installation por-
trayed not only human stories, but also
the history of the neighborhood.
Juliana do Espirito Santo
38 39
Marina GuzzoAn artist and researcher of physical
arts, Marina Guzzo is a professor at
UNIFESP (Federal University of São
Paulo) at the Santos Basin Campus.
She is also a researcher at the Art and
Body Laboratory and a coordinator of
the Interdisciplinary Dance Group – N(i)
D. Her work focuses on the interface
between artistic languages and the
uncertainty of contemporary life, mix-
ing dance, performance, and circus
arts to explore the limits of the body
and subjectivity in cities and nature.
PROJECT_“Frictions” is an inter-
vention in the Market Wharf area with
the artists participating in the Colabora-
dora. It choreographs a state of pres-
ence and connection, joining the peo-
ple on the streets with colorful chairs
that were placed across the surround-
ings of Instituto Procomum. The project
intended to unveil the artist to the terri-
tory and unveil the territory to the artist,
getting people closer together, color-
ing the city and creating the possibility
of sharing common time.
Marina PaesA psychologist with a Master’s Degree, Marina has
been working for 12 years as a cultural agent and
producer in the cities of São Paulo, Assis (interior of
the state of São Paulo) and the Santos Basin. She
has worked with popular participation in collec-
tive mental health issues; was part of the Manag-
ing Collective of the Cultural Warehouse, a Point of
Culture in Assis; created and developed the project
Ritmocidades; and produced the show A.F.A.F. - Au-
tonomous Fragments on Affective Freedom (F.A.L.A
- Fragmentos Autônomos sobre Liberdades Afetivas).
She was also a producer at the Black Collective (Co-
letivo Negro) and a facilitator of circus workshops.
Marina participated in Mergulhatu, a group that per-
forms maracatu, coco, ciranda and other popular
expressions of the Brazilian Northeast.
PROJECT_“Our refuge” promoted meetings be-
tween Brazilian artists and citizens, immigrants, and
refugees, to experience what resonates from the
merger between their cultures. It featured exhibitions
and musical performances and was publicly pre-
sented in December 2018 during the Common Fes-
tival - Meeting of cultures and communities. Marina
also coordinated the production of the same festival
and produced the artistic activities held at Instituto
Procomum’s headquarters during the Colaboradora.
40 41
MIDBorn and raised in the Santos Basin, Marcelo Mid-
night (also known as “MID”) is a regular at skate
parks, rock concerts and electronic music parties
across the city. A self-taught artist, he learned to
paint at the CES (Santos Student Center, or Centro
dos Estudantes de Santos), where he developed
the critical thinking behind his paintings and graf-
fitis, which reflect on the process of verticalization
that the city has been going through. He often
uses advertising pamphlets for new buildings to
create chaotic images exposing real estate spec-
ulation, racism, social exclusion, and other capi-
talist oppressions.
PROJECT_During the months of the Colabora-
dora, MID developed and enhanced his work as a
graphic artist by creating a vast, prolific production
in 2018. His first individual exhibition happened at
Instituto Procomum in August 2018, when he in-
vited other residents of the region to interact with
his work; the second exhibition, in December 2018,
converted one of the rooms at Laboratório Proco-
mum into an extension of his creative mind, with
paintings, graffiti murals, collage and installations all
the way up to ceiling, portraying the oppression and
distress he suffers as a black artist from the periph-
eries. MID was able to mature these feelings profes-
sionally during the Colaboradora.
Michael Xavier (MK)Known as MK or Mika, Michael is a Lit-
erature student and works profession-
ally with audiovisual documentation
(especially photography) of the rock
and rap scene in the Santos Basin. He
writes poetry and music, both solo
and in groups, and participates in the
slam scene – typically in streets and
squares – either riming, producing, or
networking with poets and spaces. He
transitions easily between poetry, rap
and acoustic guitar songs. He was the
main documentarist for the projects
that happened at the Colaboradora.
PROJECT_Michael developed
two projects at the Colaboradora: the
first one, called “The Market Wharf
Slam” (“O Slam da Bacia do Merca-
do”), held marginal, peripheral poetry
gatherings, open to everyone, across
the streets of the Market Wharf. One
of the editions happened during the
Common Festival in December 2018.
He also produced the book “I Listen to
Your Love Story” (“Escuto sua História
de Amor”), in which he collected love
stories from the residents of the Mar-
ket Wharf area.
42 43
ORNELLA RODRIGUESA Santos-born poet, photographer, candomblecista2
and feminist, with an undergraduate degree in Liter-
ature and a graduate degree in Psychopedagogy. A
human rights defender, she began her activism as
a collaborator at the Black Women’s Culture House
(Casa de Cultura da Mulher Negra) in Santos and was
later a volunteer at the Educafro centers in the San-
tos Basin. She dedicates herself to literary produc-
tion, disseminating writing among women. Ornella
also produces photography work focused on ac-
cessibility, feminine identity and invisibilized people.
PROJECT_Ornella developed the performance
“Tsunami”, presented in late 2018 at the Catraia Sta-
tion in front of the Municipal Market, as a result of
her study of the “invisible body” in dance. She also
produced “Perspectives on the Colaboradora”,
which addressed women’s relationship with their
self-image and their history/ancestrality through
poetry workshops, banners, and photography. This
work led to an exhibition at the headquarters of In-
stituto Procomum.
RÉVIA multiple-medium artist, Révi
(Matheus Ferreira de Mattos Coelho)
studied the cello for five years at the
Brás Cubas Municipal Theater, two of
which he played violoncello da spalla
at their orchestra. He has performed
at several music, circus, and theater
festivals in the states of São Paulo and
Rio de Janeiro. A street artist, he is of-
ten seen throughout the streets of the
Santos Basin doing juggling acts. He
makes T-shirts out of his original draw-
ings, sings, and plays the guitar and
tambourine skilfully. He is a founding
member, producer, juggler, clown, and
acrobat at the Peripheral Circus (Circo
Periférico).
PROJECT_The circus brings en-
tertainment to all of those who can ac-
cess is, and sets new horizons for what
is possible and impossible. Under this
motto, Révi developed the Peripher-
al Circus with the goal of offering free
circus workshops at the headquarters
of Instituto Procomum, leading into a
performance at Morro do Querosene
in December 2018. He also worked
alongside Ewald, another Colaborado-
ra participant, in the project “(Un)Com-
mon Cabaret”.
2 The term candomblecista refers to the followers of Candomblé, a religious tradition based on African beliefs and heritage, practiced mainly in Brazil.
44
Agreements: seeking an authentic
coexistence
03
03Everything we do at Instituto Procomum has the mission to foster the culture of the commons – in other words, to affirm that it is possible to live a life based on collaboration, autonomy, and the exchange between peers, producing what Paulo Freire called an authentic form of coexis-tence: the cooperating unit. More specifically, at the Colaboradora - Arts and Communities, we have been investigating the building of a com-munity of peers (artists) in a specific territo-ry where social action takes place (the Market Wharf), based on three main pillars: self-organi-zation, care, and a time-based social currency.
46 47
Time banking: money can’t buy me loveTime banking is an age-old idea. While its origins can be traced back to
the beginnings of anarchism and utopian socialism, in the 19th Century,
to some extent it is connected to the birth of money itself. An important
experience in that period was the Cincinnati Time Bank, in the U.S., which
inspired many similar initiatives. Our interest, however, is to imagine mon-
ey – as taught by Bernard Lietaer and Stephen Belgin in an article pub-
lished in Piseagrama magazine – as “an agreement, inside a community,
to use a standardized item as a means of exchange”. In other words, it is
a convention, established by the Nation State – in this case, the entity on
which its emission and organization depends. But this is only one possi-
ble agreement.
In the cultural universe, there is a common logic of camaraderie:
nonmaterial exchanges to help projects happen, given that the circu-
lation of money is short. In the case of the Colaboradora, peer cooper-
ation was established as a pedagogical form of “payment” for the ser-
vices offered by Instituto Procomum. This payment, however, should
not be done to the institute, but to the network, creating an abundance
flow that could demonstrate cooperation as an excellent way to ad-
vance local economies. Therefore, a hacker (and magician!) could “sell”
development hours to build a website for a photographer and poet in
exchange for promotional photos of his work. None of them might have
the money to buy these services, but with a time-based currency this
transaction becomes possible. And another, powerful economy begins
to emerge when this happens.
Total exchanged between participants throughout the project:
950hours
Self-management: are we together in thisSelf-organization is the process in which a group of people take on the responsibili-
ty of coexisting through self-established agreements. Differently from self-manage-
ment, it is not about shared management. It is about collective organizing through
autonomously defined methods and criteria. During the Colaboradora, we sought
to encourage this capacity among the participants through immersions conducted
by the Etinerâncias Collective, through collective work dynamics and, most of all,
through a self-education fund to be managed by the participating artists. Out of ev-
erything we tested, this last aspect was the least successful. The group decided to
split the resources equally and allow individual decisions about how to spend each
quota. Therefore, what happened was a form of privatization of the collective resourc-
es through an equal partition. We did not stop this from happening precisely because
we understood that the collective decision was more important than our interference.
Doubtlessly, in today’s society, we are used to other governance regimes, and devel-
oping self-organization continues to be one of the main challenges of the entire pro-
cess of building the commons. Still, a broad education program was made available
to the artists and, in some cases, to other users of Laboratório Procomum.
48 49
The Spanish Colaboradora, which inspired us, is a public project. Over
there, at the La Azucarera Cultural Center, the public administration is
responsible for the cleaning and security of the collective work space.
At Laboratório Procomum, we have indeed hired professional cleaning
services; however, influenced by feminist thinking, we established the
issue of reproductive labor and care as a constant line of enquiry. Care
is an essential component in building the commons. Therefore we de-
cided that, in return for their participation, the artists should donate their
time to reproductive work. We organized joint efforts to care for the work
space and other spaces that were shared between the collaborators and
other communities (especially the kitchen and bathrooms). Sometimes,
the results were positive. At other times, extremely frustrating. Sef-or-
ganization is a challenge: when it comes to cooperating for care, we are
used to centralized leadership and alienation. In Brazil, we often adopt
a predatory attitude towards everything that is not individual property.
To build a different notion of respect remains a core challenge. Much of
what we have learned in our lives has to be unlearned, allowing us to see
how rich it can be to live in an environment of shared care.
Care work: who cleans your living room? Your kitchen? Your toilet?
Total hours of care work donated to Instituto Procomum:
96hours
• Design Workshop (1 day)
• Project Writing Workshop (1 day)
• 2 seminars with local artistic and social leaders to exchange information about the territory where the Colaboradora takes place
• Afro-Brazilian Dance Classes (12 hours)
• Visit to Instituto Inhotim, one of the most important contemporary art collections in Brazil and considered one of the largest outdoor art centers in Latin America. This visit was planned in partnership with one of the visiting artists of Laboratório Procomum’s Residency project, who, in addition to welcoming the group at this house, also guided the visits (2 days)
• Typography Workshop (Brush Mania) (2 days)
• Meeting of the Theater of the Oppressed Network Without Borders (3 days)
• Dramaturgy Supervision (4 days)
• Practices of Somatic Education (2 days)
• Brazilian Congress of Circus Activities (4 days)
• Clown Workshop (2 days)
• Lighting Workshop (1 day)
• Workshop on Matriarchal Principles and the Knowledge of Grandmothers (1 day)
• Dancehall Queen Style Workshop (1 day)
• Study and experience on the Situationist International (4 days)
• Curatorial Process for Exhibitions (2 days)
• Eutony Workshop: body language and ancestrality (1 day)
• Photographic experience at the Recôncavo region in the state of Bahia (5 days)
• Music Video Workshop (5 days)
Women of the Colaboradora during monthly cleaning
of the space.
50
The Colaboradora generated around 150 actions in the territory, among which were performances, artistic interventions, workshops, and wanderin-gs, which benefited different audiences. Many ar-tists also joined permanent Work Groups at La-boratório Procomum, broadening their circuits of exchange and production. Many of the actions were documented at the Studio (https://labsan-tista.procomum.org/a-colaboradora-o-atelie/), a platform which all artists could access to docu-ment their individual and collective processes. The following pages feature some of these moments of creation and collaboration between the artists.
Studio
04
04
52 53
_“During my walk I see a #collaborator balanc-
ing a juggling pin on his nose; then, I meet the
folks from the Germinação collective working full
throttle to care for gardens and use new tech-
niques to plow the land; and soon arrive other
#collaborators from a trip around the neighbor-
hood: they went painting, spreading enjoyment
through walls that now transcend their condition
as borderlines and acquire new meaning.”
(Marina Paes, 6/2018)
“On one of the walls of the Colaboradora, we
reproduced a map of the territory we’re in. The
proposal is for us to assess the space and be
able to locate places where we had connec-
tions, affections, important experiences, and so
on. A map as the possibility of a journey, of path-
ways, and not as a boundary, a frontier.”
(Marina Paes, 7/2018)
“On August 31st we celebrated the launch of the exhibit of our friend MID.
On his face, his gestures, his stride amongst his friends we could see
the joy and satisfaction of someone who, with their talent and dedica-
tion, achieved recognition from a group of people and was embarking
on a new, auspicious journey. His frenetic, dark production – as opposed
to clarity – and at the same time enigmatic, entangled in the labyrinths
produced by a deranged city, provokes astonishment and admiration due
to its magnitude. And so I root for him. For this life. Disguised as letters
turned inside-out, as lines that don’t need explanation, that constitute
meanings, and that free us from the small fascisms that spread through
the air of daily urban life. The contradictions of love and happiness hap-
pened at the end of the night, on the streets, when MID wanted to extend
his celebration and was interrupted by a violent attitude from someone
exerting their putrid power...”
(Marina Paes, 8/2018)
“My children came with me to the
activities and ended up participa-
ting too. In the end, the drawings
they made during the workshops
were also exhibited as part of the
work. This experience was great
because they got to see my rea-
lity, who I am.”
Luana Camargo, participant in
the Colaboradora and resident
of the Market Wharf
Fixxxa, Malagrino and Mid and the first wall painted together.
Fixxxa, Marina Paes and her father the day they drew the Map of the Market Basin on the wall of the Colaboradora’s workspace.
Mid at the opening of his first exhibition at the Procomum Institute.
54 55
“In August I participated in the “Lab for
Sensitive Cartographies in Public Spac-
es” with Santiago Cao. I can say for sure
that the way I see the places I go through
will never be the same – either I’ll be
glimpsing ordinary practices, violations,
and deviations, or I’ll have the desire to
constantly identify the places as public,
private, or intimate. At the end of the pro-
cess we did an intervention in front of the
catraia. Through a body gathering device
(the popcorn maker) and a story activation
device (the music box) we created a place
were we could experience all the knowl-
edge we built and deconstructed.”
(Ewald, 9/2018)
“On a humid Thursday night, following sever-
al days of rain in the city of Santos, my body
danced through the streets. In the place where
the catraieiros3 rest until they reach they turn
taking passengers to Vicente de Carvalho, a
city district of Guarujá, São Paulo, there is a
lonely rectangle, a small near-pier. In the wan-
derings I took during the three months spent
at the Market Wharf, this space was always
empty.
On the street, an always empty space
Calls my attention
And listens to me
On the street, an always empty space
Puts me at the gap of the question
It makes me say
Where was my body that day?”
(Juliana, 10/2018)
“Our second gathering had new wom-
en, but who were no strangers to us.
My friend Simone joined with her
Mother to knit and tell their stories:
catholic school, religious education, a
black family from the countryside. It’s
amazing how our bodies intersect in
this movement. In every fabric, a story
of love, care, and ancestrality. In every
thread, the interlacing of memories.
There’s more to come in October!”
(Ornella, 9/2018)
“I always hear, in meetings, that we have to do more grassroots
work. But the very people who say and hear that only go to the
hood to buy drugs. Why isn’t the periphery the place where
people actually perform? Why does the periphery become
the stage only when a funding program forces you to do at
least one performance there?
We are now all fearing a new model of life4, but if it unfor-
tunately really happens, we’re the ones to blame. While we
skipped doing anything empirical, the churches were feeding
the homeless people and paying visits in prisons… in the hood
there’s a church in every corner.”
(Révi, 10/2018)
Ornella Rodrigues and her students at the Feminist Embroidery Workshops.
3 Boatmen who pilot catraias, small motor boats similar in shape to canoes.4 Referring to the new conservative wave that would take Brazilian politics following the 2018 Presidential and State elections.
Group during Cartography workshops.
56 57
“My work and the work of many other black
women tends to be about ourselves. Black
women, when dedicated to their singularity,
involuntarily foster plurality. There are many
of us living inside a single woman. This is why
the subjectivity of black women is so complex,
unique, and divine; it is plural and only grows,
swallowing everything that surrounds it. The
subjectivity of a black woman is updated every
time she exchanges with other black women.”
(Cássia, 11/2018)
“For four months I have been gathering stories and drawings of people who live the
reality of the streets. On Tuesday we went out for another day of connections and we
approached a man and a woman; both had suffered from violent relationships. How-
ever, the man was more violent; he was sitting in a corner and looked like someone
who could reciprocate exchanges, so we approached him as we usually do: “Hi, can
you give us a minute of your attention?”, and he said yes. I always introduce the whole
trio: “I’m Fixxa, she’s Juliana, and he’s MK.” “Juliana is my daughter’s name”, said the
man, smiling. I started explaining about the project we’re developing; when I men-
tioned painting a medicinal plant on his back, he sent us away: “get out of here, you
and your lecture”, he said, making a fist and threatening to punch. Doing such delicate
work requires us to be careful, attentive, and wise, because the memories we access
are nothing but constructions of past experiences through the present moment.”
(Fixxa, 11/2018)
“This experience really changed my rela-
tionship with bad memories. In the [danc-
ing] activity we had to face our bad memo-
ries and learn how to deal with them, so we
no longer hid them inside us. And knowing
how to deal with these memories made me
stronger, made my humor more stable – to
know that I have myself and I can be strong
in tough situations. No matter what I am, I
don’t need to stop being me, I just need to
face the situation.”
Luana Camargo, participant in the Colabo-
radora and resident of the Market Wharf
“12 people, 24 chairs. This is how we set up
a space not far from IP, over in the Market
Wharf, as part of Nina’s project in the Colab-
oradora. We did it with partners and docu-
menting the action. In a circle, always next to
an empty chair. Glimpsing at a partner who
joined us. And so begins the game of mu-
sical (?) chairs (?). We move through the en-
vironment with an invitation (?), “would you
like to sit down?”, or anything else that this
movement hinted at.”
(Marina Paes, 8/2018)
Fixxxa and Juliana do Espirito Santo in one of the drifts for the Sentido Semelhante project.
Cassia Sabino and the resident Val Souza
58
For 10 days, the streets, squares, sidewalks and walls of the Market Wharf were taken by dance and circus performances, film screenings, po-etry slams, graffiti, parties, and music jams for the COMMON Festival – Meeting of Cultures and Communities, a collaborative festival cele-brating the daily connections with the commu-nity and territory that nurtured the work cre-ated by the participants of the Colaboradora.
Conclusion
05
05
60 61
Meeting cultures and communitiesWe planned to do an artistic exhibition to celebrate and demonstrate the results of the
process experienced by the artists during the first year of the Colaboradora. Following
connections with the Santos branch of SESC-SP (one of the most prestigious cultural
institutions in the country), the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP) through two
of its extension programs, RadioSilva.org, and the Sensitivity Lab (Laboratório de Sen-
sibilidades), we converted this exhibition into the first Meeting of Cultures and Com-
munities of the Santos Market Wharf (http://culturasecomunidades.procomum.org).
The meeting lasted 10 days and, in addition to the final projects of each artist se-
lected for the Colaboradora, it promoted conversation circles, artistic performances,
and community interventions. Many of the actions were co-produced by other social
and artistic institutions working in the region. Some of them are the Santos Choro
School5, Instituto Querô, the Futuráfrica project, the Downtown Tenements Associa-
tion, the Vila Nova Community Association, and the Vila Nova Creative Village, creat-
ing a broad process of political-cultural networking in the territory we’re in.
The conversation circles invited the people to discuss the right to housing and to
their territory, the history of land use and occupation, the stories and memories of the
region, community practices and politics, black heritage and ancestrality, arts and
culture. The festival invested in art, culture, and actions in public space as forces for
collective organizing and celebration, in all of their power to create connections and
the coexistence between differences. It also sought to dialogue with the aesthetic
and cultural repertoires and practices in the territory, mixing in with the events that
constitute the identity of the region. Community and collaborative organizing were a
standard, such as a breakfast and a picnic in which the people contributed voluntarily
with items to be shared and enjoyed collectively.
In the neighborhoods of Paquetá, Vila Nova, and Vila Matias, the artists and cre-
ators joined the homeless population, the workers living in tenements, the sex work-
ers, the managers and employees of local businesses, the alcoholics and addicts, the
children and teenagers, the students from basic education to university, the benefi-
ciaries of social welfare facilities, the catholic, evangelical and spiritist believers, the
people from Afro-Brazilian religions, and the people coming and going through the
catraias – forging a cultural-political environment based on belonging and on deep
political and subjective exchanges.
The event showed that art in public spaces is a force for collective organizing
and celebration, in all of their power to create connections and the coexistence
between differences.
festival
Colaboradores during the performance Fricções.
5 Choro is an instrumental popular music genre in Brazil. The word can be translated as the noun “cry”.
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“The Colaboradora, for me, has been a turning point. It became a part of my maturing process as an artist. To be with other artists and exchange with them, with their different tempos and languages, made me expand my vision of what is art and, with this, sustain and shape my artistic purpose. I feel myself growing, and I can see that the art and the exchanges I’ve been experiencing have caused this growth”.
Cassia
“Throughout these three months of collaborative experiences I begin to think about time. The proposals we arrived with changed as we experienced the territory. The impact of such changes on us depends on time, coincidence, daily life, and unexpected factors that cannot be accounted for. To belong to the territory is something that happens grain to grain”.
Malagrino
“The Colaboradora drove an unparalleled growth in my artistic creation. The things I used to do with commitment now gain the status of truly professional practices”.
Mid
“The Colaboradora is a place of affectionate relationships where we talk and experience the territory while going through the journey of giving meaning to the stories and memories of Vila Nova”.
Fixxxa
“The Colaboradora is a device that, in addition to generating powerful connections between the artists, allows us to engage with the community by doing what we enjoy the most, which is art and culture. This fosters an exponential growth of our artistic career”.
Ewald
“I take the catraia, it’s ten minutes at sea, plus five minutes walking through Sete de Setembro [Street]: a common space inside and around. A place of passage and ethereal intersections on the ground. Exchanges and affection transform the challenges. The commons on the horizon and in a small room, in the body and mind that move through the space, in the collective memories of our childhood home. A dreaming device interfacing with realities”.
Juliana
Fixxxa, Juliana do Espirito Santo and Marianny Passos.
Final Exhibition Of Malagrino.
Fixxxa during the mural painting in the community bakery.
Drawing of the study book of Malagrino.
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What have we learned from the first edition of the Colaboradora - Arts and Communities?
What have we begun to unlearn?
Let us go back to Jean-Luc Godard’s “Je Vou Salue, Sarajevo”, in which he states that
“there is one rule and one exception: culture is the rule, art is the exception”.
The culture in the territory surrounding Laboratório Procomum is one of exclusion, ad-
diction, violence. What could art ever accomplish in a place like this? What could an artist
accomplish? What kind of artists expose themselves to these streets, this culture, to con-
front the rule? With what tools?
We learned that only an artist who rises from this territory, with their body, their gaze,
their hunger, the artist who belongs to the street and is willing to turn their own life into
a wandering, the artist who turns the rule into an exception – only they can contribute to
transform culture and produce beauty and joy where once was hardship.
Therefore, our first lesson was that the artist is not, cannot be, an outside agent. They
are the insider who produces their own difference, who ruptures the rule. To allow the
emergence of such an artist, a subject who can act in the territory to promote deep social
transformation – that is what we witnessed at the Colaboradora. This was the main result
of the project, which would not have been achieved had we not worked to break the
boundary between artist and audience. Therefore, what we began to produce in this first
year of work – and now we know what’s necessary do it better the second time around
– was a network-school, a web of creation, of horizontal exchange, in which the focus
was on the transformation of the objective and subjective existence of all those who are
excluded (us and them).
“The art of living, which blossoms still”
lessons
Our second lesson was that autonomy cannot be taught, only lived. So it would be
premature to say that what we produced here is a methodology that can be replicat-
ed. That it would be enough to read these pages, its texts and photos, to develop a
similar project to ours. With this documentation we hope only to inspire, as we were
once inspired by our partners from across the ocean. Above all, as we were inspired by
each of the people who joined us in this experiment in social and artistic collaboration.
The Colaboradora - Arts and Communities existed in a specific time and place, in
the city of Santos, in the neighborhoods of Paquetá, Vila Matias and Vila Nova (Market
Wharf), in the year of 2018, when Brazil was pushed into the abyss of authoritarianism,
by the vote, by manipulation, by fear. In this context, we did what was possible. And we
know that we still have much to do to transform our communities.
Ewald Cordeiro and a resident of the streets of the Market Basin.
EXPEDIENTEditor in chief: Marília GuaritaEditor: Rodrigo SavazoniWriter: Leó FiolettoImages: Maurice Pirotte, Rodrigo Ribeiro, Victor Marinho e Vlaidner SubirãoEditorial design: Estudio RebimbocaTranslation: Carolina Munis
